Two Moms Raise More Than $20,000 for Children With Cancer
October 9, 2013 – NEW YORK CITY: Two young mothers, Jennifer Noll and Alethea Ramirez, raised more than $20,000 in 30 days for childhood cancer research. Last month, during National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, the Poughkeepsie natives launched their campaign with their employer Adams Fairacre Farms, collecting donations at checkout lanes at all four of its locations in the Hudson Valley.
Their goal was to raise $10,000 to fund a clinical trial to bring more effective and less toxic treatment options to kids with difficult to treat cancers. But they quickly pulled in more than 20 area businesses to support the cause and doubled their goal injust one month. We cannot tell you how excited we are that this campaign was such a success, but we are not stopping there, said Noll, a mother of 2-year-old son, and co-organizer of the childhood cancer campaign at Adams Fairacre Farms.
Kids don’t just get cancer in September, and so we plan to continue raising money for childhood cancer research until there’s a cure. Cancer kills more children in the U.S. than any other disease. For kids with the deadliestchildhood cancers, including neuroblastoma, brain tumors and sarcomas, survival has remained unchanged at less than 50 percent.Alethea Ramirez, mother of three boys, ages 4, 6, 8, and co-organizer of the campaign said they’ve already expanded the campaign into Cairo, NY, at Angel`s Pizzeria. We will not stopraising money until we have completely wiped out childhood cancer. People tend to look theother way because it is so painful, but if it was your child, you would want better odds andbetter treatments, she added.
Jen and I truly believe in Solving Kids’ Cancer`s motto that Every Kid Deserves to Grow Up. “One hundred percent of all donations collected by Ramirez and Noll will help fund a clinical trialfor kids with relapsed neuroblastoma, a deadly childhood cancer. Children with relapsed or refractory neuroblastoma have few or little curative options today.”
Once the cancer has returned, it can become resistant to traditional treatment options such as chemotherapy and radiation, said Scott Kennedy, the Co-founder and Executive Director at Solving Kids’ Cancer. A new phase I trial at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Cancer Center using an immunotherapy approach with modified T cells will offer kids with this deadly type of childhood cancer a new promising treatment option.